


The Savior Programme

by rethrin



Category: Franklin & Bash
Genre: M/M, angstiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:39:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1936062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rethrin/pseuds/rethrin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"It's going to be okay," they both said, again and again.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Trying to make it true.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Savior Programme

Jared had been weird the last few days. Something big was bothering him, something serious, but he'd shaken off all Peter's attempts to talk to him. Peter hadn't pushed, he knew Jared would tell him when he could, would talk to him when he needed to. But then tonight he'd found him in the kitchen, and he'd been crying, and Peter hadn't seen him cry for at least ten years. 

"Just tell me."

Jared shook his head helplessly and tried to leave. Peter quietly followed him over to the couch, waited, and sure enough eventually Jared pulled himself together. He took a deep breath, looked at him with an expression Peter couldn't begin to put a name to. 

"You know The... uh, The Savior Programme? I... got a letter."

Jared turned away, but Peter knew he was still talking. He tried to listen but he could only hear the sound of blood rushing in his ears, he was dizzy, he couldn't breathe.

Jared turned back to him, his eyebrows furrowed, trying to hold himself together and longing for Peter to say the right thing, but Peter didn't know what that was. Peter swayed, and Jared reached out to him at once. 

"Hey," Jared touched his arm, then his chest. "Hey, you hear anything I said?"

Peter shook his head. He wanted to pull him into a hug, needed just to touch him and then Jared would tell him it was a joke, or a mistake. But he couldn't reach for him, because he couldn't move.

"It's okay," Jared said. 

Peter didn't know what that meant. He might not have heard everything, but he'd heard 'Savior Programme' and he'd seen Jared's face, so nothing was okay. 

Jared was shaking, and Peter wanted to be sick. 

Jared stroked his arm, and nudged him towards the couch. Peter sat. Jared didn't have shoes on, he noticed distractedly. They wouldn't let him take shoes, he'd seen it on all the videos. You had to go barefoot, and in the weird clothes they gave you. No personal belongings, no baggage. 

"Sorry," he said because he didn't know what else to say.

"You have to breathe, okay?"

Peter breathed because Jared told him to. 

Yes, he knew The Savior Programme. Nobody on earth that didn't. It was the first interstellar space programme to take civilian populations to colonise new worlds. It was the most expensive and controversial programme of the last decade, the leading news story every night, it was slowly cementing a new global government and changing the world as we know it. 

And he knew what a letter meant.

Jared was sitting next to him, he'd pulled his feet up on the sofa, his arms around his knees. He was looking away mostly, but flicked his eyes to Peter quickly and then away again as Peter looked at him. 

He reached out, stroked Jared's arm, kept hold of his hand slightly awkwardly. "You okay?"

Jared shook his head, half almost sort of laughed. But only because he was scared, nervous, falling apart. Peter gripped his hand tighter.

"Peter, it's not a colony."

But that was what a letter meant, everyone knew that. No invitations to humanity's great new adventure, just a summons. And an execution if you didn't show. They told you which colony wanted you, and that was it, your new life, your new world, no appeals, no refusals. 

"It's staff."

"Staff." Peter repeated, blankly struggling to find the word and it's meaning because of the loud roar that had taken up residence in his brain. It didn't make sense. "What..." 

What do they want a lawyer for? What have they told you? What the fuck? 

Staff. That meant for the project perhaps, not the ships? Peter felt a sort of hope settling in, despite everything in Jared's body language, his face, everything that said this was bad. He might be acting weird because they wanted him to work for an evil government project, wanted him to try cases he didn't believe in. But they wouldn't take him away. Peter tried to remember where the headquarters were, they'd have to move. 

"Is it Florida?"

Jared took a sharp breath, which turned into another laugh, a horrible nervous sound with no humour in it. He shook his head again. He finally looked up. "Staff on a ship."

Peter felt his face falling away from him, and watched Jared's do the same.

"Peter it's not . . it's not a colony. Staff means I get to come back. They need people on the return journeys."

"Lawyers?"

"Cleaners."

"Oh." 

Jared didn't say anything, just waited a long silent couple of minutes and made Peter ask the million dollar question. 

"How long?"

Jared's eyes closed. 

"It's a year..." 

Peter didn't understand, he didn't understand the sudden burst of relief that came as a physical pain in his chest, because Jared was barely breathing, and he looked as if he was going to die, and a year was a long time, but it wasn't forever, and Peter knew he was missing something, and he tried not to smile, but he wanted-

"...ship time." 

So quietly, and with a hitch in his throat, and it took Peter an age for the words to fall into place. One year ship time. 

Peter froze, and waited.

"It's uh," Jared caught sight of something on his sleeve, picked it off. He shifted on the couch, turning further from Peter again, dipping his head. And Peter waited, needing to know but not wanting to hear it. "It's twenty-six years."

Peter was shaking his head and standing up and leaving. 

He was in his room before he even knew he'd moved. 

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

He stood in the middle of the floor, dragging in breath after breath, eventually remembering to breathe out as well. 

Jared gave him a minute then came in without knocking and walked straight into a tight hug. 

"Sorry," Peter said. "I didn't mean to..." Walk out like that. Leave you there. Over-react. Was he over-reacting? 

Jared gave him a hard squeeze and when he moved away there were tears in his eyes, but he shook his head. "S'okay."

"Are you? Okay?" 

Jared shook his head dismissively, like he'd given up on okay, barely remembered what it meant.

"When do you... When?"

"Five weeks."

"Oh." Peter's insides heaved, he was cold and too hot, he was made of sand. He pulled Jared back for another hug. 

He didn't know what to do, or to say, or how to say it. 

"They can't just-"

"Yeah, they can. You know they can." Jared moved away and stroked his arm gently as he did, telling him to shut up. He went to the bed and sat down, knees pulled up again, hugging himself. "I didn't know how to tell you."

Peter nodded silently. 

Twenty-six years. 

Twenty-six years for him. One year for Jared. 

Twenty-six years on his own. 

He struggled to do the math. He'd be sixty-three and Jared would be thirty-eight. 

He tried to imagine not seeing Jared for a year, five years, eight. Twenty-six years was forever. 

Twenty-six years ago they'd been eleven. 

"You want me to go?" Jared asked. 

Peter looked at him blankly. Of course he didn't, but it wasn't his choice, Jared had just said as much. Then he realised he meant right now, did he want him to leave him alone. 

"No." He went to sit on the bed beside him. "I didn't mean to run out like that."

"I know."

"Have you... We can appeal, we can..."

Jared shook his head. "I looked at everything, there's nothing I'm valid for."

The Savior Programme didn't give much away, only very specific circumstances could earn an appeal and even then 99% failed. Peter knew if there was a loophole Jared would have found it. And he hadn't heard of a single person who had run or hidden and got away with it either. But maybe they just didn't let you know about those cases, maybe there were things they could do, places they could go. 

"Your dad's firm..." Leonard had some government contracts, was involved with some of the projects, even if he didn't work directly for Savior. "Can't he do something? Have you told him?"

"He rang me yesterday. He said there was nothing he could do, and that he'd get into trouble for even trying." Peter felt Jared stiffen beside him, his voice cold and quiet. "He also told me that staff was a good gig, maybe I'd be safer out there and everything would be less of a mess when I got back."

Everything in Jared's voice suggested it, and Peter felt it like ice inside him. "You think he arranged it." 

Jared shrugged, like it didn't even matter, and Peter wanted to explode, throw things, get in the car right now and find Leonard Franklin and shove his fist down his throat... Jared shook his head, and it was resignation, it meant he didn't have any proof and even if he did rage wasn't any use to him. He was hollowed out and didn't have the time to waste on it. It meant he wasn't thinking about it, and wasn't going to talk about it so Peter needed to leave it alone.

Peter took deep breaths, and felt the same resignation slide into him. Five weeks. Not long enough to even start hating Leonard as much as he deserved. He wiped his face, suddenly aware of the tears slipping down his cheeks.

"We could get married," he said. 

They still took married people, but they took them together, one of the few remaining humanities in the Programme. But even as he said it he knew that marriages after the letters weren't recognised by law. No amount of evidence of an ongoing relationship had ever been enough to change the ruling, and they weren't even in a relationship so their evidence would be shaky at best. 

"It wouldn't count."

Peter nodded, he knew that.

"You would, though? If they'd let you, you'd come with me?"

"Course I would."

"Yeah." Jared smiled a little and pressed against Peter's arm a little further. 

They sat for a while. "You'll be okay," Jared said quietly.

Peter furrowed his eyebrows because he didn't think that was true at all. "You will too."

Jared nodded slowly, unconvinced. 

Then he reached down to the floor, picked up an x-box controller and passed it to Peter. Got the other one for himself, then went to set everything up. 

They sat with their backs against the headboard, right up against each other. The same as a million nights before, and in a way it was easy. All the same jokes, the same victories and squabbles, a script they could stick to so that they didn't have to think or talk. They'd done the same thing after after Peter's dad had left, after Jared's aunt Helen died, when Peter broke up with Janie, when Jared's dad cut him off.

And when it was late Jared stayed, slept in his boxers and t-shirt. There was space between them in the bed, but Peter took Jared's hand in his and Jared squeezed it and didn't move away.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Jared was automatically released from his contract at Infeld Daniels. Peter took the time off as well. They didn't have anything to do except hang out and not talk about it. So they threw a huge sprawling mess of a party, and Jared got laid a whole lot as though he was going off to war. 

"Should have signed up years ago," he said, sitting down next to Peter by the hot tub. Tired and grinning like... well, like someone who'd just spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the shower with Tammy and Brigitta. 

Peter passed him a beer, letting their fingers meet as he did. 

"You're not the only one thinking that, Mike and Joey just asked me if I'd throw them the same party in a couple of months. They want to enjoy the attention, then fake a reprieve at the last minute."

"Yeah? You going to do it?"

Peter shrugged. He didn't know. He wasn't thinking a couple of months into the future.

"Okay, so you get a letter, you can either go to a colony where the land is lava and fire, but there are like houses on stilts and rope bridges-"

"I don't think they colonise lava planets."

Jared ignored him. "-but if you fall in you die, and it's hot and fiery and-"

"It's basically Hell?"

"Yeah. _Except_ you're the only guy, so you have to father all the babies right, pretty cool, and all the women are absolute tens, beautiful and perfect and curvy."

"Or..." Peter prompted after a few minutes of Jared staring dreamily into the middle distance.

"Oh, right. _Or_ you get to go to like a beautiful garden planet that practices free love and there are five women for every guy and it's always sunny and you live on the beach and eat oysters."

"And?"

"And what?"

"I don't get it, what's wrong with the Eden one?"

"Ah. The women are just eights and nines."

"I don't think you understand this game."

Jared shrugged with a contented smile. "I just want you to be happy."

Peter laughed. "Okay. I'd choose the Eden one. I figure if you're the only guy things are going to get weird eventually, and besides all my children would have to have sex with each other. It would end badly."

"Yeah, probably."

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Everyone said how well they were taking it. 'Should have known, nothing gets you guys down, huh?' 'So cool, party of the century!' 'Nothing you don't turn into a party, love it.' 'When my aunt Miriam went everything was so sombre, everyone crying, this is way cooler.' 

Peter got sick of hearing it. Got sick of sharing Jared, letting other people talk to him and look at him. He closed the doors, slowly got everyone to leave. He thought Jared might be pissed, but Jared smiled, relief in his eyes. 

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Jared slept in Peter's room; it was only in the dark that they really talked about it at all. 

_"You're not to be miserable."_  
 _"Okay."_  
 _"Get married and have a family."_  
 _"Okay."_

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Jared wrote twenty-six years worth of christmas cards and birthday cards for everyone and gave them to Peter. Mother's day cards too, even wedding cards in case Carmen or Pindar ever made it down the aisle. 

"I gave yours to Carmen."

Peter took the stack off him, all neatly dated in the top right hand corner where the stamp would go. 

"If they get married more than once I haven't got a card for the second time, so you have to sign me on yours."

Peter nodded.

"And some of them are kind of lame but it's hard to find a million cards all at once."

Peter nodded again, he knew he should be doing more in this conversation but the weight of the cards in his hands was too much and not enough and twenty-six years was pressing onto his chest, unimaginable.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

_"I'll be old."_  
 _"Not that old."_  
 _"You won't want to be my friend, I'll be grey. Or balding even."_  
 _"I'll manage."_  
 _"I won't know how any of the new technology works, I'll shout at people on the bus and keep my teeth in a jar."_  
 _"Peter, you're going to be sixty something, not eighty."_  
 _"It's still old."_  
 _"Not that old."_

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Jared dropped the envelope on the coffee table and everyone looked away from the movie.

"I've been officially disbarred," he said and slumped into the couch next to Peter.

"Huh?" Carmen asked. "What for?"

"Because they won't let me lawyer when I get back; I'll be out of date with all the case law. 

"That sucks."

"What are you going to do?" Pindar asked.

Jared shrugged like he hadn't thought about it, and Peter knew he hadn't. Thinking about it would interfere with their denial, no thinking more than three weeks ahead.

"You can come work for me, buddy," Peter said. "I'll take you on as an intern."

Jared sighed. "Nope, I'm through with law."

"We won't even have lawyers by then," Pindar said. "There'll be justice robots that scan your mind and read your thoughts."

Jared looked doubtful, but shrugged. "Maybe I'll open a bar."

"Cool," Peter said.

"You can come and work for me, I'll need a bus boy."

Peter smiled at him as though he wasn't funny. "We can have sharks in the walls," he said, remembering their favourite bar ever, which they'd been barred from when they were nineteen. 

"Yep," Jared said happily, adding it to his mental picture. "And a ball pit. It'll be for returnees, somewhere they'll recognise the drinks and the music and we can talk about how stupid the future is." Jared was grinning now. "It'll be like Cheers, everyone will know everyone and I'll marry all the waitresses."

"Like Cheers but with sharks in the walls," Carmen said. "Sounds awesome. Count me in if you need security."

"Bars are filthy places, did you know that in a single bowl of-"

"No."

"Pindy, shut up."

"I swear if you tell us about the germs in peanuts one more time we'll tase' you."

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

_"You'll be okay, it's only a year."_  
 _Jared nodded, "Yeah. I'll be fine."_  
 _But Peter could hear him frowning._

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

They played games and watched movies, they got drunk and got high. Anything that served as a distraction from thinking. 

And Peter looked at him. Memorising him. He tried to do it surreptitiously, but he knew Jared noticed and let him get away with it even though they were supposed to pretend everything was normal.

One day there was a knock at the door and it was a photographer. Someone Jared had hired to take shots of them all, he was allowed one photograph to take with him and he wanted something decent, he said. But the photographer took a million shots, some of the four of them, some of just Peter and Jared, and some just of Jared. Peter knew those were for him. He didn't know how to thank Jared enough so he made waffles with cream and coffee sauce, and Jared grinned at every mouthful.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

_"You could marry Mandy."_  
 _Peter searched his memory. "From the ice-cream stand?"_  
 _"Yeah. I put her number on your dresser."_

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Jared went to visit his mom, and at the last moment he asked Peter to go along. Peter did with relief, hadn't known how he was going to cope with Jared being gone for three whole days.

His mom cried a lot and that made Peter cry too. He wondered if she knew what Leonard had done. What he might have done.

She found him when he was on his own in the kitchen and told him that she knew he'd miss Jared as much as she would. That it was a comfort to her in a small way that someone would. He knew what she meant. He hugged her even though she wasn't the sort of woman you hugged. He'd known her for over twenty years and he thought it was the first time he'd ever touched her. 

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

_"You have to be careful."_  
 _"Course."_  
 _"I mean it, don't get into trouble, just do what they say. Don't mess with stuff, or volunteer for anything."_  
 _"I'll be fine."_  
 _"Don't press any buttons if you don't know what they do."_  
 _"Dude! I'll be good."_

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Peter found Jared lying on the couch, watching Texas Ranger and not quite crying. He lay down next to him. Jared pressed into him and told him he was fine. Peter just nodded.

"But you have to be there. When I get back."

"Course I'll-"

"No, just listen. Because you'll have had a whole life without me and you'll be old and barely remember me." His voice was muffled by tears. "But it's only a year to me, so I'll need to see you, even if it's not the same between us, I just need you to-"

"I'll be there."

Jared nodded and Peter just hugged him tighter.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

_"It's going to be okay," they both said, again and again._  
 _Trying to make it true._

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

"It's clean in space," Pindar said. "Perfectly clean and no germs, the oxygen level is higher than on earth, and you never have to go outside."

Carmen hit his arm, letting him know that envy was not an appropriate reaction right now.

"I'm on cleaning duty," Jared said, eating his cornflakes. "That means clearing all the dead skin cells, and hair out of the filters, and anything else people have spilt or dropped. Vomit floats, gets everywhere, you have to catch it with a small vacuum thing, and pretty much everyone vomits for the first few weeks."

"Oh." Pindar looked disgusted, another dream ruined.

"And I have to wash down the sleepers. Make sure their food tubes and waste tubes are all in order." 

A lot of the colonists spent the journey in cryogenic suspension. They'd all seen the huge rooms full of machinery, grey frozen bodies standing in glass tubes, wires and pipes keeping them alive.

Pindar looked like he wanted to vomit, which was what Jared had wanted, but he realised Peter had stilled next to him and was hardly breathing. He put a hand on his arm. "They're just sleeping, Peter. Perfectly fine again once they're woken up."

Peter nodded but looked unconvinced. Jared sighed, and Carmen smiled at him sympathetically.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

_"You'll make new friends."_  
 _Peter clenched his jaw. He thought Jared meant it as an order, part of this happy life he kept making Peter promise to lead without him._  
 _But he sounded scared too, sick almost._  
 _"Not like you," he said, softly because his throat hurt._

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Jared was upset, angry at everything and everyone and when he came to bed Peter said something bland, something meant to be comforting, something he couldn't even remember afterwards. Jared shoved at him, hard, kicked him too, told him to fuck off pretending that everything was okay. He nearly screamed, frustration pouring out of him. Peter shoved back, the way he had since they were kids, but Jared caught his arm, pulled him closer and then he was kissing him. Hard and angry. Desperate, exhausted, pleading. 

All of Peter responded, he touched him, not softly, everywhere he could, pressing into him, pulling his t-shirt up so he could reach skin. His hands pressed over Jared's ribs, then moved down his sides, nails pressing into his skin. Jared did the same to him. No tenderness in their touch, just need and anger, fear. And all the time they were kissing, Jared's mouth hot and desperate under his.

"You'll forget about me," Jared said, sounding broken, shoving hard at Peter's chest, writhing under him, shaking.

Peter pulled Jared's head back, fingers twisted in his hair, and he kissed him even harder than before. Trying to kiss sense into him. "Couldn't," he said, and he pushed Jared down harder into the mattress, furious with him for saying it, for even thinking it. 

"You will, because you won't be you." 

Jared lay still suddenly, breathing hard and his face fell. Peter was half on top of him, he stayed there, holding him together. 

"I'll still love you, though. You know that." He hated saying it, even now was worried Jared would laugh at him for it. He shook him again, but gently. "I'll always love you."

Jared's breath broke and he was going to cry and Peter couldn't bear it, couldn't do it. He kissed him again and touched him. He set about distracting him from feeling anything except him, from thinking about anything except now. And Jared reached out again, touching Peter, softer now but still demanding. When he arched, pressing into Peter, moaning softly at the back of his throat, he was hard. Peter made him wait as long as he could bear, kissing and biting and stroking him. 

He could feel Jared calming down even as he wound him tighter; he pressed into Peter's touch, kissed him and his moans turned from frustration to pleasure to need. All the knots in Jared's muscles dissolved under Peter's touch, until he was clay, liquid even, moulded by Peter, flowing with him. Peter breathed with him, whispered that he would always love him, always, kept saying it until Jared understood.

"Please," he moaned, and Peter didn't make him ask twice, he pushed Jared's boxers out of the way, took Jared in his hand and squeezed him hard. Jared came quickly, loud and beautiful, and Peter carried him through it, made it last, then joined him without even thinking, barely had to touch himself.

Jared was spent, exhausted. He licked Peter's mouth, whispered sorry and Peter just shook his head. He pulled him tight and kept him there. Jared was asleep in seconds. 

They had another week together. Peter wanted to scream. 

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ 

_"Don't die before I come back."_  
 _Jared tried not to say it, but said it all the time, quiet and pleading._  
 _"I won't. I promise."_

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~

Peter woke early and left Jared sleeping, went to fix breakfast. He wondered if it was going to be awkward between them, and was pretty sure it wasn't. Even if it didn't happen again, it was something they'd needed, and it had been perfect. They had another week, they weren't going to waste their time being weird about something perfect.

There was a knock at the door, and when he answered it there were soldiers. 

Peter shook his head stupidly as they pushed past him. They were a week early. They went into the bedroom, ordered Jared up, he had ten minutes. Peter stared at him helplessly from the doorway. Ten minutes. 

"You can't," Peter said helplessly. "He has another week."

One of the guys shook his head. "Too many people run, we come early now."

Jared didn't have to pack because he wasn't allowed to take anything. He looked up at Peter, terrified. Peter went and stood with him as he dressed. Held his shoulder as he walked out to the main room. Carmen and Pindar were there, drawn by the noise. 

"I uh, I'm going," Jared said to them.

They both had tears in their eyes. Jared hugged them, whispered to them both. When he turned back to Peter he was lost. Peter just held him, because there wasn't anything else to do. He could smell the eggs he'd been going to bring him burning in the kitchen. 

"I'll be there," he said. "I promise."

Jared nodded. 

When the soldiers told them it was time Peter let go and Jared walked away. Peter knew he should fight and shout, couldn't believe he would just let this happen. But a few more minutes wouldn't be enough, another week, another month, none of it was anything so he just let him go. 

Carmen was there, holding his arm, and Jared stared back at him. He tried to smile but didn't quite make it. 

They slammed the door as they left.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'Time Travel' square of my trope bingo card.


End file.
